Examining Buzz Aldrin’s roadmap to Mars

November 15, 2013 by Marshall Murphy

Legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently released “A Unified Space Vision,” his personal plan for humankind’s next two decades in space. Blending elements from today’s space flight reality with visions for missions yet to come, Aldrin foresees the United States leading the charge to a permanent human presence on Mars by 2040.

In addition to Orion development, Aldrin’s plan envisions a NASA-crafted manned Mars Exploration Vehicle (MEV). MEVs ultimately would be placed on orbits that regularly cycle between Earth and Mars, allowing for relatively routine round-trip transportation to the Red Planet.

Companion modules, called exploration modules (XMs), would accompany both Orion and the MEV on most of their missions. XMs would provide much of the living and storage space necessitated by long-duration spaceflight.

Phobos would serve as a “base camp” for the manned settlement of Mars and provide a staging area for XMs, MEVs, robotic components and MLs.

MEVs then would be placed into two distinct Earth-Mars cycler orbits, named the “Armstrong Cycler,” and the “Conrad Cycler.” The cyclers are christened in honor of the first and third humans, respectively, to walk on the Moon.

Each cycler would provide for unique windows for Earth departure and Mars arrival, and vice-versa, allowing for slightly more flexible and frequent missions.

In 2032, NASA would send 3 XMs, a MEV and 2 MLs on an unmanned flight to Phobos. Using the Armstrong Cycler, this flight would reach Mars in 2033, deposit the XMs and MLs and use the Armstrong Cycler once more to return to Earth.

A 2034 mission, aided by the Conrad Cycler, would send a three-person crew to Phobos. Once there, the crew would use the modules deposited in 2032 to land and live on Phobos for one year. The crew would use the Conrad Cycler to return to Earth in 2035.

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A new, three-crewmember mission would launch to Phobos in 2036 with the help of the Armstrong cycler.

The crew would support the unmanned construction and operation of a robotic International Mars Base (IMB).

Over the course of its estimated one-and-a-half years of operation, the IMB would set the groundwork for what Aldrin considers to be the ultimate triumph of his plan: humans settling on Mars.

The same three crewmembers that would support the IMB also would be the first people to tread the Red Planet. In 2038, they would leave Phobos and use a previously deposited ML to land on Mars and inaugurate the first permanent human settlement on a planet beyond Earth.

Within a year, a crew of six would launch from Earth, rendezvous with a MEV on the Conrad Cycler, reach Mars orbit and join the previous crew on the Martian surface.

Finally, in 2040, another six-person crew would leave Earth and land on Mars, this time with the aid of the Armstrong Cycler.

After boosting the total population of the hypothetical Martian settlement to 15 people, this mission would conclude Aldrin’s chronological plan for the next quarter-century of manned spaceflight and complete what Aldrin hails as “a challenging task that is noble, inspiring, and challenging for humankind.”

The looming Moon:

While Aldrin’s vision for the future of manned space exploration is mostly crafted with Mars in mind, the plan is not without a mention of Earth’s Moon.

Once the darling of NASA’s immediate space ambitions, a near-future return to the lunar surface was shelved following the defunding of the Constellation Program (CxP), the announcement of SLS and NASA’s recent shift toward prioritizing manned missions to asteroids.

Aldrin himself once criticized the notion of a lunar return as unimaginative and uninspiring.

In his proposal, Aldrin indicates that an international base would harness the potential of a lunar settlement without solely anchoring the United States to the “Apollo on steroids” commitments of CxP.

Aldrin states, “The United States space program should help other nations achieve what it has already done (while leveraging the collaboration to further U.S. goals).”